Clifford's Blues (33 page)

My news came from the Reds with their contacts inside the Punishment Company, the rifle range commando detail, the crematorium commando, and so on. I'd bet bottom dollar that Bernhardt knew all along about his wife and Gitzig, but he needed Gitzig then. Poor Lily. I suppose there was no place for her to run to. I'm just happy Bernhardt is a jazz music freak. And that he liked Anna well enough to leave us all alone—her, Dieter Lange, and me. Well. The Langes can guess, or just make it their business not to know. Ain't none of my business anyway.

So when Dieter Lange finally gets me alone and says, “Bernhardt's transferred to France. His wife is gone and his servant's gone and his house is closed up. What do you think of that?”

I say, “Is that so? He's in France? Everybody wants to go to France these days. And Gitzig, where could he be, what could he be up to? Surely, something with Bernhardt, wouldn't you say?” But I can't fool Dieter Lange; he knows I know something, but he doesn't know how to make me tell it.

“They say he's divorced his wife,” he says, “and had his man sent to Buchenwald. Might talk too much here, you know.” Dieter Lange sighs. “Anyway, we won't have to walk on eggshells around here now. A transfer may be a good thing for Bernhardt's career.” Yeah, I'm thinking, and for yours, too. Not good having too many crooks working out the same kitchen, especially if one is cooking your wife all the time, and you know it but don't want to do anything about it.

Anna is more direct when she gets me by myself. “He could be a mean man, Fritz Bernhardt. He could hurt you. Well, you know. Look what happened to those people who tried to get you away.” Anna rolls her eyes. “True, he may be in France, but I believe that's only to get ready to do in England what he did in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, but worse! And if anything's happened to Lily, I don't want to know about it.” She looks at me hopefully, as though I might say something. But that's not going to happen. Not in this life. “Do you believe he divorced her?” I shrug. “Was there anything going on between Lily and that Gitshit? C'mon. You talked with him. He was your friend. He nursed you when you were sick that time, remember?” I shrug again. “Just as well Bernhardt's gone,” she says. “He wasn't coming around too much. Busy, he said. And things, well, they changed.”

Tuesday, Nov. 12, 1940

Listen to Goebbels and the Germans are kicking England's ass; listen to the
BBC
and the English are kicking Germany's ass. One thing for sure, though: English cities are catching hell, so everyone believes Goebbels. They think maybe the invasion of England is on the way, or better, that England will quit like France. The Germans would like the war to be over. They don't understand why the English won't quit.

Not quite two weeks ago the English bombed Berlin for the first time. At night. You would have thought a colored man walked into a meeting of Kluxers and punched one in the jaw the way the Germans carried on. What did they expect? Then, two nights after that, the English came again.

This past Sunday Hitler spoke on the radio. He swore to destroy English cities, burn them to the ground. Huebner is now in Mauthausen, working in the quarry with other Witness details. Each such commando lasts about four months. Then the
SS
marches them right off the top of the quarry. Splat. Splat, splat. Huebner was a good man, but good don't count for shit in these camps. Anyway, you were okay by me, Huebner.

Yesterday after the noon meal, a bunch of Poles were lined up on the Dancing Ground. Lappus said they were officials. They looked scared. I'm sure they would have traded the
“P”
S on their uniforms for anything else just then. They formed up after a roll call and marched north on the 'Strasse. To the northeast of the camp is the swamp, and mostly Jews work that detail. The Poles weren't going out there to help the Jews. Beyond the swamp is the rifle range, the Schiessplatz, where prisoners are shot. The Poles marched north, and we waited for the sound of gunshots to carry back to us on the wind. We always waited, but because of the distance and the way the range was built—halfway down into the ground, what they called a
Kugelfangen
, a bullet catcher—we didn't always hear the gunfire.

While we waited, the first French prisoners climbed down from the freight cars that had been pushed onto the siding near the southeast side of the camp. They straggled to the quarantine hut. If Pierre were alive, he'd give them uniforms that had been deloused and had
“F”
S sewn on them.
(The pieces go out, the pieces come in, and all they amount to are lots of dead men.)

Thursday, April 24, 1941

It started Monday. A big
Svina Exkursiona
, the prisoners call it, was set for Tuesday and Wednesday.
Reichsführer
Heinrich Himmler was to visit.

Visits by the big shots, even
SS
big shots, are good, because no one gets beaten or killed just before, during, or after them. And the food isn't bad, either, even though the prisoners don't get the pigs that are always slaughtered just before the big shots are shown into the prison kitchen. On the other hand, the camp has to be made spotless to give the impression that prisoners always live so neatly and are always so clean.

The rain started Sunday night, and on the way into camp Monday morning I could see mud and puddles, and I knew the canteen and the blocks would be filthy by the end of the day. How were things to get cleaned and stay clean until after Himmler's visit?

The same as always. More ashes and dirt on the 'Strasse and the 'Platz. Shoes off at the door of the blocks, the canteen, all the buildings. It rained all day Monday, into the night. After dinner, Dieter Lange said I should do things around the house on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Himmler's pig visit would be over by noon Wednesday. This was just in case one of the officers wanted to show off and be cute with the
Schwarze Amerikaner
. I have to say that sometimes Dieter Lange does try to keep me out of harm's way.

Tonight he told me and Anna about the visit and how Loritz and his staff stood out there in the rain in the middle of the 'Platz until Himmler's car, with the license plate
SS
1, drove up. This was after Himmler had inspected the
SS
guards near their barracks. From time to time I threw a small log into the porcelain stove to knock off the damp chill. Anna began to snore softly. Dieter Lange shrugged and continued with his cognac. Himmler came and Himmler went, the shrug said. Of course, he wasn't one of the big shots in camp, so he missed a lot of what was going on. As usual.

But he had always understood, and so did I, that the things he did he could only do because no one paid much attention to him as long as he did his job. He helped out the
SS
kitty and his own pocket, of course. And he was going to Paris to see what else he might do to fatten his wallet.

I hate going downstairs when the weather is damp and cold like this, and Dieter Lange and Anna hate going up to their room, but at least they have each other to stay warm by. Dieter Lange thinks Himmler came to look over the problem with space. Germany invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on the 6th, so here we go with more pieces.

Fri., May 16, 1941

Dieter Lange and Anna are due to return from France tomorrow. They have been gone a week. Somebody put a bug in Dieter Lange's ear that they should go before the middle of June because he just might be busy soon after. He told me this one day while we were rearranging the attic for more space. (The cellar, which now has a strange smell, could not hold even a straight pin, it's so full.) He looked worried when he told me. “The pieces,” he muttered. “The more they capture, the more pieces to feed.” He grunted. “And the more money to make. But where can I put it all, where? Where to put it.” Then he said, “Now Laufen, now Tittmonig, the pieces …” He was talking to himself and moving the cans and jars and links of dried meat as though they were checkers or chess pieces.

I know that parts of Dieter Lange sometimes fly away from him like crazy notes break out from keys you never intended to touch. His life is too much for him. He was a small-time hustler, pimp, faggot, but through the
SS
he'd become much more: the canteen supply officer for at least thirty camps for which, to which, and through which he has to “move the pieces.” He has to keep two sets of books (one for the authorities and one for himself) and watch the prisoners who work for him or have them watch each other. What he needs is a colored jazz musician who owes his life to him in each of the thirty-odd canteens in his charge, not just me in Dachau.

Like everyone else, Dieter Lange now prefers Witnesses. Next to a colored musician, they're pretty good workers. But they don't last long. They are among the fastest moving “pieces.”

I'm glad the Langes went to Paris again. I thought it might be good for Dieter Lange. He might run up on a solution for moving and hiding his money, which I bet my last dollar is what's really worrying him. I don't want him to get sick or go nuts. If I am going to live, I need his help. No Dieter Lange, no Clifford Pepperidge.

Half of this week I spent in the canteen going over the stock and records. I can always eat the canteen food, the good stuff that Dieter Lange and me keep hidden from Uhlmer and Lappus. The problem was the bathroom. The Reds didn't want me to use theirs and neither did the Greens, who weren't far away. Both thought I should pay—with cigarettes or canned food or sweets—just to take a shit or a piss. They didn't used to mind so much, but now everything is so crowded.

The nights with their floodlights and train-rolling, the banging sounds, the occasional shot off in the distance, the “sporting” on the 'Platz when the guards made some poor prisoners run around and roll on the ground while dogs snapped at them for hours on end, could not bring deep sleep. I never spent a night in the canteen without thinking of the time they brought in Pierre's body.

The rest of the week I spent at the house, cleaning, gardening—and playing for hours at a time. The piano is way out of tune; sounds spongy and the pedals are too loose. But I played. Not trying to work out anything. Just keeping close.

Something's going on. It's like before the invasion of Poland. No trains have come into camp carrying new prisoners; they arrive empty and go out filled with finished factory work, rifles, and parts for all kinds of things I don't know a damn thing about. Those trains pull out two and three times a day, and the prisoners who work in the factories go around the clock in three shifts. The guards whisper among themselves. Piles and piles of new prisoner uniforms have been uncrated, so we all know the camp will get even more crowded.

Tuesday, June 24, 1941

Oh, shit!

The Reds are in as much of a stew as they can be without drawing too much attention to themselves. Germany invaded Russia on Sunday and, according to the radio announcer, is roaring unmolested through it like some ancient Teutonic giant. For everybody it must be like doing a crazy solo in a great big band with row upon row of brass, reeds, and sidemen doubled up everywhere. When will this solo end? How many more bars to go? What, another chorus? What, another and another and another …? No coda in sight? Another bar of a melody that none of the prisoners wants to dance to anymore (though they must, of course)? When does this blues piece end? 'Cause that's what it is, a blues to end all blues, your soul getting soggy and coming apart like bread in water. Can't put no name on these blues. But the people who ain't prisoners like it, the
SS
and the civilians in the factories and warehouses between the compound and the camp. Everywhere you can hear German marches and Germans marching—in the camp, outside it, over the radio and the public address systems. Oompah-bah! Oompah-bah! Crash! Cymbs! A roll of snares! Trumpets! Bugles! Trombones! Kettle drums! Bass drums! The Germans in their various uniforms. Even coal miners have them.

Every prisoner who enters the canteen has a story. “Russia falls in three weeks,” says one, a Green.

“Ah, no,” says an old Red, one who will be going East to help finish some new camps in Poland. “
That
symphony won't be played again, not this time.”

German Greens and Blacks stand up the most for the German army, which “drove the English into the sea, trampled the Belgians, Dutch, Danes, Norwegians, Poles, and French. Germany will extend from the Seine past the Volga.”

“And you'll still be a child-molester!”

Rumor and gossip and argument and sometimes fact meet in the canteen like people in a train station, but the weight of fact shadows the movements of the 20,000 slaves and their 500
SS
guards: The French did give up and the English took a helluva bath, and the hope that they together—or singly—would kick Hitler's ass and see us released just “
durch den Kamin fliegen gehen
,” just went up the chimney like the smoke from another burning cadaver. For whatever the Reds feel or want, how can the Russians, who so quickly sold out almost two years ago, defeat a blitzkrieging army that at this very moment is practically at the main highways to Moscow and Stalingrad and Leningrad? Never mind that the English are still raiding the north with their planes and bombs.

“Stalin bought time!” some of the Reds now argue.

“And divided the East with Germany! Naive! Crooked! And now the devil's getting his due!”

“Trotskyite!”

At home they shouted at me for breakfast the other morning, like I was some kind of slave. (As much as we'd done together.) Made me mad, but I brought it on myself; they got used to this old coon doing his Sambo show with the cooking and serving, just to keep his ass out of, if not the oven, another camp or even, if you want to put lick-back-to-lick, this camp, on the other side. I spoiled them, and now they need me. Wasn't that what the old coon wanted? Yeah, man, it was, and I do live, and not badly, either, while a whole lot of other folks have kicked the bucket, gone up the chimney, got shot while escaping, taken the
“Fantomas”
to Hartheim. So I don't complain. I just get mad.